Technology and nostalgia

Lucy posted on brands and nostalgia the other week and it reminded me of this very light-hearted blog on the Wired website looking at 100 technological things that won’t be passed on to the next generation. Worryingly for me at least, I’ve had personal experiences of a great deal of them: Screeching dial-up modems, Rotary-dial telephones (the comedian Chris Rock’s take on dialing one of these is still truly classic), DOS, Laserdisc, blowing air into games cartridges to get them to work etc.

With some of these I think it’s actually a genuine shame that future generations won’t get to experience them. Sure iPods are great, but can you ever truly appreciate music unless you’ve recorded the top 40 on the radio and meticulously pressed pause during every single bit of talking? Yes digital cameras are great, but what beats actually having album upon album of your photos actually printed out rather than sat on a USB stick?

Some things never change though. I cannot for the life of me see a time in the future when the answer to a TV remote not working isn’t just to take out the batteries and swap which slot they were in. Or that at some point in your life you won’t have to explain to your mother down the phone that the label of the dvd has to face upwards in the tray for it to work.

Anyone got any other items of technological nostalgia that they’ll miss?